Working with a small planning and risk team that is supporting an expensive and complex defence enterprise, it can take a decade or more to bring a new capability into service. Given the need for sustained investment, effort on the scale of a national endeavour, clear sight, and political will, strategic roadmapping is critical to success. Decisions made years in advance must be accurate due to the significant time and expense involved in pivoting such a large-scale operation.
“It should never be a case of a list of capabilities of which you can only afford to land a small proportion. In these difficult times, we not only need to be better than that, but we cannot afford not to be.”
- Head of Strategy and Planning
The challenge - help identify gaps, issues and dependencies across the whole enterprise
Our task was to:
- Create a configured network model of the enterprise to understand “cause and consequence” at multiple levels.
- Articulate delivery strategy and its associated narrative.
- Mitigate risk through timely decisions and appropriate interventions.
Our work encompasses strategically important, technically complex, and interdependent portfolios, programs, and projects. Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) focus on delivery, but often lack a holistic view. They need a configured and accessible view to determine the consequences of events and coordinate with colleagues effectively to generate an appropriate course of action.
Senior decision-makers from the civil service, military, and industry tasked us with building a configured network structured around key build components, infrastructure development, and cross-cutting functions to identify gaps, issues, and dependencies.
A critical aspect of this project was harnessing human experience and intelligence to plan and build a reliable and true roadmap and network. Subject matter expertise and organizational intellect are vital competitive advantages that AI cannot replace. The diverse cultures of the military, industry, and service sectors generate and sustain a peer-to-peer advantage.
The solution - connect anything, visualize everything
We needed scheduling and visualization tools to connect complex schedules, visualize the entire enterprise, and simplify its complexity. Existing tools like P6, Excel, and Palantir couldn’t meet the requirements for enterprise network-based analysis, live data custom storylines and focused narratives.
“Seeing SharpCloud in action supporting the Oil and Gas Industry in the North Sea and meeting their team was a game-changer for us. We now have a configured enterprise network, and the SharpCloud team responds immediately to the challenges we face. Using version 11 of the software, we are building the next generation of visualization tools that measure slack in a network, allowing us to see not only when damage occurs but also pinpointing the specific event or capability affected.”
Back in 2019, our industry partner’s CEO challenged us to find ‘the needle in the haystack.’ With SharpCloud, we achieved this, shaping and delivering a coherent enterprise that sustains and enhances our defence priorities. The benefits extend beyond our enterprise into the wider defence community.
Its visual data capabilities have elevated discussions with senior stakeholders, providing them with more informed insights. Additionally, SharpCloud facilitates the forecasting of event impacts and offers strategies for mitigating risks effectively. Moreover, it fosters collective learning and collaboration across the entire organization, enabling teams to work together seamlessly towards common objectives.
Key learnings to navigate complexity
- Deliver simple data rich narratives
SharpCloud is a visualization tool that supports delivering simple, data-rich narratives to experienced senior decision-makers who are not necessarily subject matter experts. It coheres an enterprise that spans international, federal, military, and industrial boundaries, enriching the decision-making process and generating greater value from an enterprise constrained by technological challenges and financial resources.
- Transparency ensuring problems cannot be ignored
SharpCloud's ability to simplify complexity delivers transparent, well-evidenced narratives, enabling confident and mature leadership to handle transparency. The informed network accessed via SharpCloud captures institutional learning, experience, and mitigates risk, proving priceless for our enterprise.
- Significant financial opportunities
The potential to save 10% of multi-million or billion-dollar budgets with SharpCloud makes its use critical.
Looking ahead to the future
Our partner is now working with national and international industry partners to generate the 3rd generation network modelling capability. Driven by a live, common dataset, it spans enterprise boundaries, sharing a data hierarchy with several portfolio-based digital planning tools. This capability links the in-service environment with build lines, disposals, and the supply chain, all secured and configured to safeguard the work.
This capability secures and simplifies complex decisions, generating transparency that captures institutional learning, requiring considered management. SharpCloud has become invaluable in shaping, driving, and mitigating risk across the enterprise.
“As important, is the tools' ability, over time, to generate a sustainable competitive advantage for an organization in defence, logistics, or any other public or private sector.”
- Head of Strategy and Planning